


End of Love

by surprisepink



Category: Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken | Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword
Genre: F/M, Love that could have been, One-Sided Attraction, Tragedy, harken is actually dead in this, love that should have been?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:00:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25919962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surprisepink/pseuds/surprisepink
Summary: She only lets herself love him when he's already a memory.
Relationships: Isadora/Legault (Fire Emblem)
Kudos: 2





	End of Love

**Author's Note:**

> > and it was so far to fall  
> but it didn't hurt at all  
> and let it wash away, wash [away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz04ydxnCPo)
> 
> Did you know: my favorite GBA paired ending is this one. 

It was far too late when she realized that she was in love with him.

Perhaps it's not such a surprise given _—_ well, given everything. Their differences in backgrounds, their personalities. The futures that lie before them when they were allies: she sworn to knighthood for as long as she had an earthy presence, and he free to do as he pleased. She'd been knighted at eighteen, and a decade later it was near impossible to comprehend the freedom that he had. And so she didn't; she hadn't regretted her path before meeting him and refused to start.

And yet in one moment, the time that he asked if she was spoken for, she had thought to say no. Thought, for a moment, that she might like to accept his advances and see what future that might bring. Harken, now long dead, had never been _hers_ ; Isadora was only a mistress to a man whose true love was Pherae.

It would be a bald-faced lie to say that her heart hadn't skipped a beat at his brazenness. She was accustomed to being flirted with, usually from fellow knights who found her lovely and didn't (yet) respect her position, and she hated it. This was... not heartwarming, per se, but different. Almost exciting. Even Harken's presence had brought with it a feeling of comfort, of joy, but never of being _wanted_.

She knew this was how men like Legault managed to make harlots of women like her: with honey-sweet words and false promises that led to intimate moments. That was what she expected to follow, and it did not. He never promised her anything, and she hadn't found him dishonest either. Quite the opposite: Legault was almost too honest, too willing to speak his truth out loud regardless of how it might have been received. That, too, brought a forbidden thrill. Perhaps decades of honoring strict expectations had led her to lust for rebellion.

That night, as she drifted in that place between wakefulness and dreaming, she began to entertain thoughts of what could be if she was only brave enough to accept it. And what foolishness it was, for he had only barely flirted with her. They barely had a friendship, let alone a romance! Why, then, did her heart race at the thought of being stolen away, living life in the shadows? Why did the future laid out before her now seem so lackluster?

But she held herself to the highest of standards: duty over passion, practicality over frivolity.

Legault left the army the same way he joined: clandestinely. After their victory he was nowhere to be found, not even at the celebration that took place almost immediately after their victory. He was gone without a trace.

She asked around, ignoring the party in favor of speaking with just about everyone she could think of: first Lord Eliwood himself, who Legault might have alerted of his departure. Nothing. He was as confused as she was.

Next, the little girl who called him Uncle. Her eyes were red, and tears welled in them anew when Isadora inquired about Legault's whereabouts. Ashamed but not deterred, Isadora promptly dismissed himself.

And on and on, a dozen allies in various states of sobriety who knew nothing, until she approached the wyvern rider that he had seemed fond of. Heath, a man who was much like herself: bound to the code of knighthood, despite _—_ or perhaps because of _—t_ heir odd circumstances. Even he shook his head when she asked if he knew something, anything.

"He seems to tell you things," Isadora admitted.

"Not really. Nothing that's important," Heath replied. "What about you? The two of you seemed... intimate."

Isadora's cheeks turned pink. "Please don't misunderstand."

"Sorry. I didn't mean it like that." His eyes met the floor, and she realized Heath, too, was blushing. A gentleman, then, or so he tried to be. "He suggested that we might join forces after the war, and yet..."

Isadora hemmed, a sort of agreement.

"Well," Heath continued, "I suppose he was lying to the both of us."

With Legault gone _—_ off getting into whatever mischief he desired, Isadora hoped, or at least alive _—_ he is no longer a temptation, but a memory. And so she falls in love with that memory. She remembers each of their few conversations fondly, repeating his words over and over in her head until she memorizes them like scripture. She remembers his advice to her, as indirect as it had been. She adopts his tendency to tap his finger against his face when he's thinking. She prays for him each night, though she doubts he's much of a believer.

It isn't the first time: she had loved Harken's memory too, long after he was buried.

A decade lies between their parting and that day, a decade during which she has grown older than she ever thought possible in a mere ten years. In total, it marks twenty years as a knight. Her blade feels heavier each day, even though the war is over. The blood is easy to wipe off, but impossible to forget.

_Living just for battle seems pretty sad, you know? It'll do you good to think about other things once in a while._

The words echo in her mind

Isadora lives for battle. Living for anything else is too painful; loving two men and losing both, too much.

(Part of her thinks that maybe she can only love a memory.)

Knighthood has its routine duties, all of which she is proud to carry out: travelling, patrolling, seeing that conflicts in nearby villages are resolved. Isadora is doing the latter, addressing a complaint of thieves and bandits with a small group of knights, when she sees him. He's older, his hair is cropped short, and he's much rougher around the edges, but it is unmistakably Legault.

Traditionally, a knight negotiating with rogues like this is unthinkable. The marquis does not believe in this tradition, and so neither does Isadora.

She charges toward Legault, and he _—_ he must have suffered some grave injury in these ten years, because he's unable to slip into the shadows the way that he used to be. She takes advantage of it, and easily cuts off his escape route with her horse.

"What are you doing?" she says _—_ barks, really. It comes out harsher than expected.

He grins, a grin she'd recognize anywhere. A grin that still haunts her dreams sometimes. "Long time no see, Dame Knight."

"Raiding a village with a group of bandits, are you? I thought you had more honor than this."

"It's a long story, and I don't think I want to tell it. Not to you."

"I think you should," she says. "I know you're a good man, Master Legault, and I am willing to accept your story if you will only tell me."

"Is that so?"

"Have you ever known me to lie?"

"Well, well. In that case... it all began about two years ago. I was staying in a village in Bern, doing odd jobs. Until they dried up, that is, and this became my only opportunity..."

Then her steed cries out, and then she's falling, bucked into the air. The world seems to slow down as she tumbles, and she realizes at once what happened. Blast... of _course_ he was only waiting until she had her guard down, then targeted her horse. A mounted knight is only invincible to a footsoldier until she is no longer mounted.

"So it's fortunate that I haven't lost my old skills completely just yet," Legault says as she hits the ground. A sickening thud resonates through her skull, and then there is only darkness.

A final irony, then: he does not love her memory in return. 

...

_After the war, Isadora went to Pherae, and Legault went to Bern. Though they traveled different paths, they stayed in each other’s hearts. They met again ten years later, on the battlefield as enemies._

**Author's Note:**

> Been thinking about death a lot lately but like, aren't we all?


End file.
